The Dutch are a particular people. It seems they don’t really have any specific Dutch kind of people, but you would be wrong to assume this. When getting to know a few more Dutch people and learning about the history a bit, it seems that there is a lot of interesting stuff that most foreigners will never know about. Like movies!

A lot of my friends don’t really watch any other movie than your common English spoken productions. Myself i am a big fan of film-house movies and the more b-movie genres. I came across a few Dutch movies that actually anybody who is a bit interested in learning a bit more about the Dutch should see. These guys make some pretty good stuff! And it is nice to see the city of Amsterdam as it was in the 90’s or 80’s.

Amsterdamned (1988), a film by Dick Maas, was the first movie I came across. This thriller about a police detective trying to catch a serial killer, has some great action sequences, some pretty gruesome murdering going on, some funny stuff, but mostly it gives a great impression of Amsterdam. Amsterdam seems to be able to function pretty good as a setting for some spectacular chases with speedboats and can also be a great horror location. Misty images of Amsterdam by night are beautifully used to set the atmosphere in the movie and it’s great to recognize some of the locations when you have visited the city yourself.

New Kids Turbo (2010) is a film by Steffen Haars and Flip Van der Kuil and cracked me up from the beginning until the very end. It sets in a small village in the south of the Netherlands (close to the place where Royal Queen Seeds started their emporium i heard ;-), and portraits a group of 5 friends and their unintentional effort to start a revolution in their country. Because of the crisis going on in the Netherlands, they decide not to pay for anything anymore; not for gas,not for food, not for beer, not for anything anymore. Their hilarious situations and fights against the local cops attracts attention from the media and soon the government decides to get involved in shutting them down. The movie was quite a success in the Netherlands and a just as funny sequel has already been made.